Parker Writesand stuff

In my last post I touched on heteronormativity. At Free Culture Conference 2008, I came up with a new word: Proprionormativity.

I am sharing this because language is power. Having words to succinctly express ideas is extremely empowering to the individual, and extremely useful for any sort of movement. Queer children are tortured by their sexuality until they learn what “gay” or “queer” means, giving them the tools to make sense of their identity.

I think there are similarities between the free software and free culture movements and the gay rights movements (and I’m hoping to reflect on this in another post at some point), but there are also important differences. I say this simply to assert that I don’t claim that proprionormativity is directly related to heteronormativity. I’m simply borrowing the idea.

Examples of proprionormative statements:
“Downloading movies online is illegal.” (assumes that videos are published with closed licenses)
“Windows or mac?” (disregards other operating systems, most of which are open-source)

Surely we Free Culture activists see open source software and openly licensed (ie Creative Commons licensed) media as useful, perhaps even essential. But do we as a society see open licenses as “normal”? How does our language either support or challenge proprionormativity? Normality has to do with both statistics and internalized impressions that become manifest in our language. I argue that we can expedite the movement of openness into a realm of statistical “normality” by using language to assert a social normality (recall that heteronormativity is a real issue despite the statistical “abnormality” of queerness).

One might argue that openness is always going to be abnormal while copyright law is an opt-out system (as it currently is in the US). However, despite the way that the law is constructed, it is extremely common to opt in to copyright. Individuals and corporations almost always include copyright declarations with their work. There is just as much action involved in including a copyright declaration as there is in attaching a Creative Commons license. However, there is less choice involved, because people don’t understand that open licensing is a viable option. This is precisely why we must use language to combat proprionormativity.

Careful attention to our own language, and gentle correction of the language of others can provoke a paradigm shift in the way that we view creativity and technology. Right now, the assumption made by the lay person is that the more valuable zer work is, the more important it is that ze control the rights to copies and derivatives in order to “secure profits”. But we know that allowing people to share and remix only increases the value of a work, and that creators can monetize openly-licensed work. Through the careful use of language that challenges proprionormativity, we can progress society to a point where the average creator sees open licensing as “normal.” Once the artist is made aware that open licensing really is an option, the choice is obvious.

President-elect Barack Obama talked about words earlier this year.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“You should totally come to this event, there are going to be lots of cute girls.”

I have no reason to be personally offended when people make statements which assume that I’m heterosexual. In fact, I do identify as heterosexual in most contexts. But I know that this assumed heterosexuality is counterproductive to society as a whole. The message sent is that there is something fundamentally off or odd about being queer.

I sometimes accuse people of making statements that are heteronormative. Some people rebut by pointing out that, given simple statistics, heterosexuality is “normal.” I would remind these people that they’re not likely to ask someone of unknown religiosity which local church they go to, despite the fact that Christianity is statistically “normal.”

Relatedly (and, in my opinion, more interestingly), when describing a singular, hypothetical person (or a person of unknown gender), we have a dilemma. “They” is grammatically incorrect, he/she is too long, and “one” is too cumbersome, often requiring sentences to be restructured. Most people just use “he” without even thinking about it. Even women. Indeed, this is traditionally the most grammatically correct option, although it’s probably the least politically correct. “When a person checks a book out from the library, he agrees to return it within two weeks.”

I’ve developed the habit of using the pronoun “she” to describe hypothetical people. I first noticed this being done by Cory Doctorow a couple years ago. A number of other great speakers and authors do this. This practice is brilliant because of the way that it stands out. The listener or reader notices how unexpected the use of a female pronoun is, then, if she thinks critically about it, she notices how absurd it is that male pronouns are so much more acceptable. “He/she” is more inclusive (and perhaps more PC) than “she,” but it doesn’t challenge the audience to reflect on the issue.

Last week, I decided that I’m going to take this a step further. I’m going to start using Ze. It’s even louder than “she” in it’s call to the listener to reflect on the message sent by pronoun use. I anticipate plenty of queries from friends and professors, and I’m excited and prepared to have those conversations. I also anticipate that adopting this practice will take quite a bit of time (to be honest, I have yet to become fully consistent with my use of “she”). While I’m still developing the habit, I see myself being accused of simply looking for attention or trying to sound smart. Well, you have to start somewhere, and anyway, the dialog is always useful. The exercise of altering word choice forces both speakers and

These are just words. But words have both implicit and explicit meaning. Word choice sends a message, and most of this message is processed and internalized entirely subconsciously.

You can either play in to the dominant paradigm, or you can challenge and subvert it. You can make the world a more open and accepting place where everyone, not just the average white heterosexual man, is “normal.” You can fix it, even if it ain’t broke.